Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Black Currant Jam

On Monday, with S. picking and me processing, we put up seven quarts of cherry juice.  One quart didn't seal, so that one went into the fridge, to be used soon.

Tuesday S. picked an ice cream bucket full of black currants.  There's a really good crop this year.

I treated them the same as the red currants from early this month, washing them and boiling them with a little bit of water and then processing them through a food mill, the way you would make applesauce.  That produced about 9 cups of very thick "gloop".

Because it was so thick I added the quart of cherry juice from the fridge.  Added to that was a mixture of 15 cups of sugar and 2 packages of "No Sugar Added" jelling powder.  After heating it to a good, fast boil and boiling well for over a minute, I ladled the jam into sterilized jars and put on the sealing lids.  Here's the harvest: 10 pint jars and 3 cup sized jars of jam.  It's a little on the runny side, but will be great on toast or pancakes, or even as a topping on ice cream.

I always set the hot, filled jars out on the counter on a pad of towels, separated well from each other, to cool and seal.  These were very slow to seal, perhaps because they were slow to cool.  I finished filling the jars around 4:30 p.m.  The last jar sealed at 10 p.m.  Was I ever happy to hear that snap shut!

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